Dealing with Anticipatory Grief Dear Dr. Neimeyer, My question is about anticipatory grief, the distress that family members can feel when a loved one is receiving end-of-life care. I work in a palliative care unit of a large hospital, and we often have families who are overwhelmed with the reality of the patient’s impending death, […]
Anticipatory grief, when a loved one is dying Read More »
Dear Dr. Neimeyer, I’m a writer for my high school’s award-winning newspaper and I’m writing an article about the unpredictability of grief. I would love if you could answer some of my questions regarding the subject, because a lot of the students at are school have lost people recently. Here are my questions Sofia
Unpredictability of Grief: a Letter to Sofia Read More »
Dear Dr. Neimeyer, As a counselor myself, I was interested to read recently that the majority of people who experience a significant loss react with a surprising degree of resilience, to the extent that the grief process can, in the longer term, be a positive experience for them. This tends to counter a prevailing, if
A Grief Therapist Asks about expectations Read More »
In my practice I have encountered some clients who have experienced a significant loss in the past (e.g., loss of a parent when they were teenagers), which obviously altered their world views. They made sense of their losses by coming to the conclusion that bad things can happen randomly in this world, while at the
Punished by God? : Dear Dr. Neimeyer: Read More »
I am a therapist who is seeing a woman who lives alone and without children, for complicated grief, and one of the people for whom she is grieving is her husband. They were married 4 years before he died 19 years ago, Every year on their anniversary, she has a very complicated ritual
A Widow’s Complicated Grief Rituals…Dear Dr. Neimeyer: Read More »
Dr. Neimeyer, While grieving of a dear one is very personal, how would you suggest to stop my friends who keep doing different things to interrupt me during the time that I want to be stay alone? As obvious as it is, I need my time to feel sad, my time to internalize being left
Making time to grieve Read More »
Dear Dr. Neimeyer, As a counselor myself, I was interested to read recently that the majority of people who experience a significant loss react with a surprising degree of resilience, to the extent that the grief process can, in the longer term, be a positive experience for them. This tends to counter a prevailing, if
A Grief Therapist Asks about expectations Read More »
Dear Dr. Neimeyer, I am working with a client whose husband died suddenly eleven days after the birth of their first child. That son is now just turning three and is asking incessantly, “where is my father?” The mother, nanny, etc., honor the question and respond that his father is in heaven. He is aware
For therapists: explaining a parent’s death to children Read More »
Dear Dr. Neimeyer, I have worked for bereavement support centers for the past four years as a member of the clinical staff; however, I have realized that I may not want to focus on clinical practice. I am still passionate about grief and want to contribute to our field in a different, but still meaningful,
Bereavement Research opportunities Read More »
Dear Dr. Neimeyer, I am a nurse who works in a palliative care unit of a major metropolitan hospital, where I specialize in bereavement care. Although the work is very satisfying, it is also frustrating, as I seem to be flooded with referrals for grief therapy from several hospital units when a patient dies, and
When does grief require clinical intervention? Read More »
